ABSTRACT
Speech acts have been examined as linguistic carriers of politeness, and politeness is considered to be inherent in some speech acts. In speech act studies, particularly those that centre on cross-cultural and intercultural speech acts, English linguistic realisations and conversational strategies are often interpreted as manifestation of universal sociolinguistic rules of politeness. An increasing number of studies have, however, discussed speech acts as culture specific and language specific, with a focus on the relationships between different cultural norms, values and assumptions, different languages, and different speech acts.
While the universality of politeness has been scrutinised and questioned, facework strategies, which are considered to be largely motivated by politeness for face negotiation in everyday human interaction, have also been examined across different cultures and discussed in terms of such factors as cultural variability in values, interaction scripts, and language.
This chapter describes face, facework, and politeness from historical perspectives, beginning with Erving Goffman’s notions of face and facework. Drawing from prior empirical cross- and intercultural communication research studies, particularly those published after 2010, the authors discuss critical issues and topics relevant to research in speech acts, facework, and politeness, with a view to examining current contributions and making recommendations for future research.
